Gluon propagator on a centre-vortex background

Abstract

The impact of $SU(3)$ centre vortices on the gluon propagator in Landau gauge is investigated on original, vortex-removed and vortex-only lattice gauge field configurations. Vortex identification is found to partition the gluon propagator into short range strength on the vortex removed configurations and long range strength on the vortex only configurations. The effect of smoothing vortex-only configurations is also studied, and a regime for recovering the form of the smoothed original propagator from vortex-only configurations is introduced. The results reinforce the significance of centre vortices in a fundamental understanding of QCD vacuum structure.